A Circle Snowman CASE

This cute little guy is making the 'rounds' these days (Get it?  He's made of circle punches... hee hee!).  Believe it or not, I made this card at our local coffee shop where I like to hang out with my DH on weekends while he listens to Leo Laporte's The Tech Guy show on the radio.  I do quite a bit of my crafting sitting here across from my handsome hubby - be it designing something new, assembling something I started at home, or cutting card stock to prep for an upcoming stamp camp.  Anyway, onto today's post...

I first saw him on Corinne (aka Roxy) Sommerville's blog, then on Dawn Griffith's, and a little while later on Renee Van Stralen's.  edited to add:  Corinne cased this cute snowman from Sharon Field, and Sharon's card was inspired by a card designed by Heidi Van Laar, which appeared in Papercrafts Holiday Cards and More Volume 5.

I have this thing about matting/borders, so I basically decided to CASE Corinne's card (Copy And Steal Everything) and put a Chocolate Chip card base behind the card front.  I love the snowflake from the set Season of Friendship, so I stamped it onto the Crumb Cake card stock.  I debated on adding some glitter to the snowflakes, then decided against it.  Unfortunately the sponge I grabbed wasn't completely clean, so my Marina Mist sponging of the snowman circles and snow has a few stray colors mixed, but this is my prototype, so I'll be sure to use a cleaner sponge when I make more of this little guy.

I don't send many Christmas cards, so I think this will be our Christmas card this year (and we'll make him at my next stamp camp with the gals at work, too).  Thanks for taking time from your busy day to visit my blog today!

Stamp Sets:  Season of Friendship, Seasonal Sentiments
Card Stock:  Chocolate Chip, Crumb Cake, Whisper White, Pumpkin Pie
Inks:  Craft White, Marina Mist, Basic Black (classic pad & marker), Cherry Cobbler (marker)
Punches:  1 1/4 inch, 1 3/4 inch and 2 1/2 inch circle punches, snowflake for arms, large star for nose
Accessories:  2 way glue pen, ultrafine clear glitter, stampin' dimensionals, eraser from a new pencil (to stamp eyes)

MDS Journal

I created a journal last month based on a card I made on MDS earlier this year, and this past weekend I finally sent the journal off to SU! printing services to have it printed.  I was a bit shocked at the price ($24.95) but decided to try it anyway.  It arrived today, and although I was happy about the fast turnaround time, I was upset to see that the image didn't print as I'd had it laid out in MDS.  Nowhere did I see any information that you needed to take into consideration the area where the binding is on the left, so instead of my project being centered, it's unbalanced.  Here's how it looked in MDS (front, then back):

The photo cover bleed area cropped it a little tighter, but the image was centered in the bleed area.  Here's how it actually printed.  My scanner had issues with the shiny reflective cover, but you get the idea:

It looks great other than the unbalanced cover, but at $24.95 each, I'm not sure I would want to try it again.

November Sparkles Team Meeting Swap

I've been trying to think of what I wanted to do for my swap for our upcoming team meeting.  Our theme this time around is 3D Christmas.  I did some surfing on the web earlier today, looking for ideas, and kept going back to this post as well as this one from Connie Collins.  She used the 5-Point 3D star die to create her gorgeous projects.  I don't have the die (ok, not yet - I just ordered it), so while I continued searching the web for ideas, I came across this post on Splitcoast by Cindy Cade.  Cindy has a great tutorial showing how she made her 'pop stars', and what's even better, when I checked the gallery there on Splitcoast for more 'pop stars', Cindy had uploaded a template for those of us without the die.  I gave it a try tonight and I'm really happy how mine turned out. 

Since I don't (yet) have the die, I used Cindy's template, using a little bit of snail to help hold it onto the can while I cut out the star points.  Cindy's stars have a different embossing for each point, but I personally didn't like that, so I used the Vintage Wallpaper embossing folder, placing the cut out aluminum shape in the same place for each star point to have a more uniform look to my star.  To emboss the aluminum, I used the multiplatform with tab 1, one cutting pad, then the embossing folder, with the premium crease pad on top.  I think I'll try it without any tabs next time as the embossing punched all the way through in some places.  I have a really old hand-held stapler that staples very close to the edge, which worked great to hold my star points together.  Since all of my points were hand cut, there were some slight differences in how they fit together, so I needed to hide the center where they all met.  The medallion, also inspired by Connie Collins, uses the Perfect Punches stamp set, stamped on Very Vanilla in Cherry Cobbler ink (I stamped two).  I punched out the center of one with a 1 1/4 inch circle punch, mounted that on an Always Artichoke 1 3/8 inch circle punchout, and then punched out the second image with the scallop circle punch, The two are adhered together with stampin' dimensionals.  I used a 1 1/4 inch strip of DSP from the Deck the Halls pack, scoring every 1/4 inch, folding back and forth to create the accordion circle for the rest of the medallion.  Large glue dots help hold it together as well as hold it onto the aluminum star.

To finish off my project, I mounted antique brads through Artichoke Deck the Halls big buttons, pushed the brad ends through the Cherry Cobbler seam binding, and pushed the brad ends through the two small holes I'd punched along the crease in the aluminum to adhere the button/brad combo.  Here's how it turned out:

I think I'll wait until the die arrives to make the rest for my swap since I'll likely need to make four or five more of these, but I'm thrilled I was able to make one without the die.  I hope the gals like my 3D swap - it was fun to make!

Tea Lights Mix-Up

Last month I saw this awesome post by fellow Stampin' Addict, Tanya.  I used this project idea for my upline's team meeting swap last month, and it was SO easy to do!  I had planned to share this with my stampers at stamp camp yesterday, but I somehow managed to leave the stamp set at home.  UGH!  One of my stampers made the box and I told her I'd stamp the top and do the candles for her over the weekend, so it wasn't a total loss, I guess.  Here's two of the ones I made last month:

I made nine of these when I was making my swaps, so I have a few left over to give away.  I think I'll redesign it in a Christmas holiday motif and bring it back next month for stamp camp.  Thank you, Tanya, for sharing your great project!

Hello, Mr. Owl!

Last month I shared the beginnings of this card with my stamp camp group as a preview for this month.  I've struggled with how to finish it over the past month, so last night, the night before stamp camp, I grabbed a sentiment stamp and some ribbon, packed it in with the rest of my stamp camp stuff, and this is what I quickly came up with while the gals were working on something else this afternoon.  It was a hit and most of my gals chose to make at least one.  Now if I can just find some time to make a few myself!  Here's this simple but cute card:

When you open up the card, this is what you see inside:

 

So glad I brought the supplies for this one along, as I forgot the stamp set I needed for the tealight project I had planned to do today as well, so this gave my stampers a fourth card to make.

First Christmas Card of 2010

Finally made a Christmas card over the weekend.  I just love the French Foliage poinsettia, so I made this one with Cherry Cobbler and Always Artichoke card stocks and inks.  Before adding the brad center, I spritzed it with the Vanilla Smooch Spritz (I hope that's what it's called - I'm too lazy to get up and go look right now).  The sentiment may be hard to see (yeah, and it's crooked, too, drats!), but it was stamped in Gold Encore ink and embossed with gold embossing powder.  The sentiment, I'm pretty sure, is from Many Merry Messages (again, too lazy to go look).  We'll likely make this one at my December stamp camp.  I love the Bisque Pottery technique for this one, too.  You can find a link for a tutorial video on this by checking out the post before this one.  Between this card and the 15 tags I made with this poinsettia, my right hand still is a little numb from all the cutting!!  Here's how it turned out:

Christmas Tag Swap, Take 2

I signed up for two spots on the annual Christmas tag swap over at Stampin' Addicts, and this weekend I got the second tag finished.  It's based on several ideas I've seen in the past week or so.  The first idea came from this poinsettia card I spotted on Vicki's blog.  She saw it on Connie's blog, which inspired her.  Vicki's inspired me.  I liked how well the Vintage Wall embossing folder went with the poinsettia, and it made me remember a cool technique I saw last weekend on Diana's blog, using the same embossing folder, which she called bisque pottery.  Diana has a great video showing how to do this technique, which involves using a brayer on one side of an embossing folder to add ink on the non-embossed parts of the card stock.  Such a cool technique, and it was just what I needed for my tag.  The DSP is Deck the Halls and the sentiment stamp is from the set All Holidays.  I used one of the larger antique brads for the center of the poinsettia.  The antique whitewashed one really goes along well with the bisque pottery look, but I only had seven of those left, so I had to use two of the other larger antique brads, which also look good.  I can't wait to see what I get in return!

Christmas Gift Tag Swap

Spoiler Alert!  If you are participating in stamper_jamie's Christmas gift tag swap, you might not want to scroll down.

I've had a lot of fun over the past year participating in card, scrapbook layout, and now gift tag swaps!  I broke down and picked up the Two Tags die a while back, and I decided to use it for my swap.  It was fun coming up with the design, which was inspired by this gift tag made by the talented Connie Collins.

Seriously, though - how many of you out there suffer from the same problem that I do?  I'm talking about being corner rounder punch challenged!  If you round the corner of two pieces of card stock that you will be layering, shouldn't the curves of the corners match up?  I tried and tried but the curvature of the two pieces just never seemed to match.  Is it just me?